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| Columbus based Value City Furniture is officially going out of business despite merger with North Carolina's American Signature Furniture. |
Capitalism at its best. The status quo keep telling you that capitalism is making Americans rich. Only the elitists are getting rich. They are hoarding the wealth, piling on the debt, conspiring ways to make Americans hate one another or other nationalities and push us to global war.
The Columbus based Value City Furniture is officially going out of business. Last year, the company announced it was closing 45% of its stores in the country. It closed roughly 100s of stores.
With no buyers and private equity firms gobbling up longstanding companies piling up debt on them, it leads to the liquidation of the company.
American Signature Furniture, the company that bought Value City and operated the remaining stores announce it too is going out of business as well.
Liquidation sales are underway at all Value City Furniture (VCF) and American Signature Inc. (ASI) stores, the company confirmed in a message on its website.
It states, “As part of the outcome of our sale process, all VCF and ASF retail stores will be permanently closing. Customers can visit our remaining locations and take advantage of store closing sales while inventory lasts. All sales are final.”
The Ohio-based ASI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November. The company has been selling furniture for nearly 80 years.
Reasons are the tariffs, sluggish holiday sales, private equity piled on debt to VCF and American Signature led to its demise. That puts 12,000 workers out of jobs.
The “Going Out of Business” sale began Jan. 9, 2026 at 79 stores across 13 states, according to a press release.
News of the company going out of business comes the same week Nexstar’s Virginia-based station WAVY reported the story of David Burpeau, from Chesapeake. He said he purchased a sectional couch from Value City that cost around $3,400. It was supposed to be delivered Dec. 23. Two days before delivery, he was informed of the company’s bankruptcy filing and was told he would not get his furniture – or a refund.
That really sucks.
How can you purchase furniture and not get it or reimbursement?
He might as well just go into a store and shoplift a sectional couch and tell the police, Value City Furniture refused to deliver my purchase and not issue a refund.
WAVY reached out to Value City about Burpeau’s situation and received no response.
Burpeau did get a response:
“Unfortunately, per bankruptcy law, Value City Furniture cannot refund you. … I wanted to call simply to reinforce the unfortunate news. … Thank you for your time and I hope you have a Happy New Year.”
The furniture company advises online that “select stores remain open to serve customers at this time.”
Sarah Leonard watched WAVY’s initial report with her son, Derrick Head, and found herself relating all too well to what happened to Burpeau.
“Then Tuesday, I’m watching the news and then I see a report by Andy Fox about various furniture issues at Value City Furniture,” Leonard said. “I immediately picked up the phone. I say, ‘Derek, you got to watch this. This is about where you saw that furniture,’ and it was coming on, and I watched, and I said, you got to be kidding me. They can’t get away with this.”
They were looking for bedroom furniture.
“We went in, found the bedroom set we liked to make the purchase, and walked out happy,” she said.
They weren’t happy for long.
She was promised a delivery date of Oct. 23, and that came and went. There were other issues on which pieces of the bedroom set were available.
They used their Value City Furniture credit card and put $2,258.94 on it, but they eventually canceled the order when they kept getting the runaround on missing pieces from the bedroom set that Value City Furniture were missing.
That led them to cancel the order.
Remember they paid, and the furniture was never made available.
Leonard got aggressive and called the credit card company who issued the card with the balance that was available to purchase the furniture.
“Then the young man comes on the phone, he talks to me, and we give him the information and everything,” she said. “He came on, and said after we talked for about 10 minutes, he said I don’t pay any more payments. I’m going to turn it over to the fraud division. We’re sorry you had this problem.”
Luckily, they only paid two monthly minimum payments, and their issue is being reviewed.
“I am not going to continue making those payments because they told me to stop making the payments,” she said.
That is true, a recording from the Synchrony Credit Car payment options stated.
“You’re not responsible for the disputed amount while our review is underway,” the recording said. “As a reminder, a minimum payment is still required by the payment due date on any non-disputed balance.”
That would mean no payment on the furniture that is in question.
“Dispute resolution could take up to 60 days since the date the claim was open,” the recording stated.
In the end, they could be forced to pay. There are too many uncertainties in a massive bankruptcy like this one.
10 On Your Side was also able to track down the salesman who sold Sarah Leonard and her son Derrick Head the furniture.
Freddy Flowers, who has resigned from the company due to these serious issues, agreed to speak to us after we reached him by phone.
10 On Your Side started with this statement: “You’re selling stuff and they don’t have it.”
“Yeah, right — it just felt like it didn’t sit right,” Flowers said. “I don’t know exactly what is going on. It just didn’t sit right, and honestly, I didn’t want to deal with the backend either, because had it been me, and I paid $3,000 for something that you are telling me I can’t get my refund for when I don’t have the furniture because of bankruptcy, … it didn’t sit right with me.”